Christian Reflections on a Jewish Messiah

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Tag Archives: free will

This week in my Tuesday night class, The Jewish Context of the Bible, we continued to look at famous rabbis. This week was Akiva (45 AD – 132 AD), perhaps my favorite rabbi of all time right under Jesus and Paul (though Akiva gives Paul a run for his money – not kidding!). You can find the audio on the website of Prestoncrest Church of Christ, or on my Audio Lessons page.

One reason I like Akiva so much is that his teachings were brilliant on their own. The other rabbis we have studied so far have been brilliant, but Jesus seems to have a similar saying to match all of theirs. Akiva, on the other hand, has several that sound like they could have been right from Jesus’ mouth, but I could not find a comparable saying. So in this post I’m going to go over two of them that go together.